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Locally Putting an End to Self-inflicted Drought, Debt and Depopulation

Allan Savory, Founder and President, Savory Institute

Allan Savory, born in Zimbabwe and educated in South Africa (University of Natal, BS in Zoology and Botany) pursued an early career as a research biologist and game ranger in the British Colonial Service of what was then Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia) and later as a farmer and game rancher in Zimbabwe.

In the 1960s he made a significant breakthrough in understanding what was causing the degradation and desertification of the world’s grassland ecosystems and, as a resource management consultant, worked with numerous managers on four continents to develop sustainable solutions.

Locally Putting an End to Self-inflicted Drought, Debt and Depopulation

During his keynote address at the 2018 No-till on the Plains Winter Conference, Allan Savory explains why present management is reductionist and is the cause of most droughts, crippling debt and emigration that are within our control locally. He will talk about a study that 30 years ago that showed early adopters of Holistic Management averaged 300% increase in profit while over 600,000 family farms failed, and suicide was the leading cause of agricultural death. He explain why such success did not spread because of the way society, and our institutions, oppose new scientific insights that are contrary to our beliefs. Just as soon as two, easy to understand, issues are accepted any farmers can begin to regenerate the land, local economy and community. Those two issues are, first management needs to be holistic embracing the web of social, economic and environmental complexity that is unavoidable. Secondly that livestock using the Holistic Planned Grazing process in place of all rotational and other grazing systems are essential tools to that regeneration in any region where the farmed soils are those of former grasslands, not forests.